Thursday, June 17, 2010

Stateline On Immigration & The NM Governor's Race

Stateline's Dan Vock was New Mexico last week talking to the gubernatorial candidates as well as the current governor about how the immigration issue is playing in the governor's race.

For me, the most interesting part was Gov. Bill Richardson talking about his interactions with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. He talks about doing a helicopter tour of the border with Brewer and later urging her not to sign the controversial immigration bill.

“I remember telling her, I said, ‘Don’t sign this bill. This is going to be a big problem for you. There’s going to be all this national attention. You’re going to have boycotts.’ And she basically said she had no options. She had a political problem with it in her own primary and her two senators. I said to myself, ‘She’s going to sign this thing.’”

Richardson also talks about the gubernatorial race, acknowledging that Lt. Gov. Diane Denish is "going to have to separate herself from me ."

“The most important dynamic is going to be, can the Republicans take advantage of having two Hispanics at the top of the ticket? That’s probably never happened anywhere in the country.”

“For Democrats, I think the lieutenant governor is well-positioned… She’s going to have to separate herself from me but define herself as a Democrat moving the state forward on the traditional Democratic issues of job creation, health care and education reform.”

And the governor talked about negative campaigning:

“All races are negative. Name me one positive race in the country. This one started the day after, because they started in on some of the law enforcement issues of Martinez. Denish was hitting right after. That’s the nature of politics right now. Negative campaigning is used extensively. And unfortunately, it works.”